The Quantum Entropy Reversing Device(QERD)
Revolutionary, Funny New Device Makes Order Out of Chaos
by
Bob Molenda
Wojtek (pronounced Voitek) still remembers that day in physics class when Professor Grzywacz (Nobody knows how to pronounce his name) talked about the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle. It just was a huge equation that dealt with probability and other things that Wojtek did not understand and did not want to know about because it would interfere with his beer session among his contemporaries. It had to do with energy, measurement and the power of the device used to measure the size of really small things that nobody could ever see. Wojtek thought it was a waste of everyone’s time because it turned out that the energy used to measure these little things was so powerful that nobody could find out where the hell the particle was after they tried to measure it. The more precisely you wanted to measure where something was at, the more you affected its position. Frustrated with his studies, Wojtek left his homeland, forgot about Uncertainty, but never about Grzywacz.
This is a lot like losing your car keys as you get out of your car, then looking for them two blocks away where the light was brighter and you could see the ground better than you could where you actually dropped the keys. The only difference was that in the case of the electron, there was a probability of finding the electron two blocks away! Professor Grzywacz kept mumbling something about there being a chance, however not very probable that the electron could actually be two blocks away from its atom. After a few beers, Wojtek later found his car keys under the light, two blocks away from where he lost them. Wave Functions are amazing things, but I digress. I digressed from the title because I thought nobody would understand it anyway. Sometimes the side trips taken by people like Wojtek are better than the main topic. “Mea Culpa!”
Quantum reversing devices were a pipedream to all the scientists working on the Nimrod Project, just outside the limits of the city in Minnesota by that name. Transmogrifiers were well known for many years after being introduced by Calvin & Hobbes in 1987. Their power consumption was legendary, at one time resulting in a three-hour blackout in greater Manhattan a few years ago.
Wojtek felt confident that he could help his friends, John and Bob with their need for a machine that might make order out of the chaos found in certain sociological or psychological studies.
Both scientists possessed a keen sense of observation and casually noticed the large increases in the numbers of Leadership Characteristics in Academic Studies over the past 2,574 years. They had some time on their hands and thought they might know a few things that were only clueless fingerprints in the past, to contemporary humanists.
Although we are dealing with words and concepts, nobody could say for sure that these intangible ideas were not behaving as very small particles, equally unseen. In other words, could they behave as both a particle and a wave? If that were the case, Leadership Characteristics could have the properties of both, subject to the quirky laws of Quantum Mechanics. “Brilliant!” thought Wojtek, as he remembered his own thoughts about uncertainty and chaos from his days at the University.
Wojtek knew that if such an isolated system were left alone, the Entropy would naturally increase over time. So he was not surprised about the increased number of Characteristics of Leaders over any length of time. In its own peculiar way, Bob thought these Characteristics were tending toward a Chaotic distribution. John (Wojtek called him Jasiu, pronounced Yah-shoe) was mainly concerned with how to monetize such a device if it could indeed make Order out of Chaos.
“Tak,” said Wojtek. This meant, “Yes, such a useful device could be made!” “I have a technician friend from my neighborhood in the old country,” he continued. “His name is Stasiu (Pronounced “Sta-shoe”) and he can make anything out of parts he finds in trash bins outside computer stores”. “He speaks good English and can even pronounce well, the name of our old professor of quantum physics,” he continued with an admiring glance.
After we were all introduced to Stasiu, we were impressed. He spoke with an eastern European accent and lived in an ethnic neighborhood with his other immigrant countrymen. All eight of them lived together, sharing a common, small apartment, with one bathroom, one small kitchen table, four chairs, a microwave, seven small bedrooms and five dogs. It was cozy and warm for a basement apartment and for some ethnic reason always in high demand by many of Stasiu’s countrymen. The air was filled with smoke, coffee, hops aroma and lots of spoken “c’s, s’s, and z’s” along with heavily rolled “r’s” as they all spoke together. This was the start of a great relationship with Stasiu as well as Wojtek and their friends, as we worked on this theoretical, yet seemingly practical hypothesis.
It was like a scene in a black and white movie from the 1940’s, remembers Jasiu. “It was a pleasure and an honor to just listen to the conversation about their work,” he mused.
“ Ya, this is a very important problem for everyone as eternity gets closer,” said Stasiu. He slowly continued, “ Sociology is filled with expanded data covering complex situations besides those found in Leadership”. “Ya, I, too had some recent, remotely related , however reactive ideas on this relatively important matter”, said Wojtek as he impressively rolled every “r” in his statement.
“I had it all figured out”, he continued “ Until Jan (pronounced Yan) and you, his foolish friend, wanted an adjustable output to allow chaos to be divided into different compartments” .
“This brought everything to a grinding halt,” said this gentle man while still sipping his Bokar coffee from the local A&P. That is, until Stasiu, Wojtek’s assistant, thought of the rapidly revolving screwdriver rachet rotator resisting arrestor.” (You must pay attention to the “rolling R’s” for maximum scientific impact.)
The device is small enough to be hand-held. Stasiu made it out of some obsolete Apple Computer connectors. The first prototype rachet rotator resistor was made out of some old hangers that were found on the floor of Wojtek’s closet, next to Paczki (this means donuts in English, but it is pronounced “Pownczki” because of the little hook under the a), one of the dogs in the apartment. Stash (familiar form of Stasiu), carefully bent the wire hangers until they resonated with the Intel chip thereby capturing the chaos signal from the MS Word File used for the data. The ability to control the chaos signal into the variable degree of ordered output was accomplished by a mere mechanical connection to the cleverly hand-wound coils of the discarded hanger that was mounted next to the racheting torque wrench.
“Outstanding effort, Stasiu!”, said Wojtek, a true appreciation of this man for his lonely, work in his basement.
“A shot for you!” commanded Wojtek, “with a Pabst chaser!” “Nasze Zdrowie!” (Pronounced, Naz Droveyh),(“Our Health” followed by the fast flip of the small whiskey glass and then the chaser), answered Stasiu.
“Where’s my beer?” asked Janek, “After all, I was the source of this problem that resulted in his idea!” Everyone ignored Janek.
“You, my clever friend, asked what did I use for the rachet?”
I said, “Yes”.
“I bought a small wrench with a rachet at a second-hand hardware store nearby the old neighborhood,” said Stasiu, “sometimes it comes loose from the hanger, but that is just a technical detail.” The entire device draws about ten amps, but it slowly delivers this energy to the device separator. “This is where the magic begins,” continues Stasiu, “You can see about 132 joules per Kelvin degree of Entropy coming from your original sample”. “It is hard on the Apple wires, but it works!” Put on your safety helmet and “Watch carefully,” Stasiu shouted over the whirring noise, as he revved up the generator.
He laughed with that maniacal scientist emotion, “Ha Ha, looky here, look at the end of the output funnel, Ha Ha !” once again making fine adjustments to the rachet wrench. As he held the funnel with the bent coathanger wire in front of me, even I could see that the devious, clever device could indeed create order out of chaos. There, before my very eyes and resting on my desktop were the 101 Characteristics of Leaders, slowly, methodically, miraculously, repeateatedly and reliably being churned into the hungry input funnel, then outputted into two incredibly neat, ordered columns, with black, Helvetica Bold font, just like Jasiu and I asked.
“Not only that” said Jasiu, “but it further organized even those two columns into another set of four that actually made even more sense!” “Good Work, Stasiu,” said Jasiu, while thankfully shaking his hand, “and Dziekuje (pronounced Jewn kuyeh), too!” Thank You!
At this point, we were all maniacally laughing like Stasiu. I have never heard Wojtek laugh, ever, that is, until this day. Jan (familiar form of Jasiu) laughed, but never while in the Marine Corps. “Nobody laughs in the Marine Corps” whispered Jan, “especially when someone is yelling at you within two inches of your nose.” “ Well, maybe some of us laugh quietly”, thought Jan, “when it was someone else who was being yelled-at.”
“Ha, Ha,” many times over, we celebrated. Laughing had to be conducted in an atmosphere of serious aplomb under such anxious peer pressure, but I digress.
Inventive success seems to bring out this hidden quality in technical people that gives rise to such spontaneous outbursts like “Ha, Ha,” that have no close, definitive meaning when connected with emotions such as “We have succeeded, you silly conservative fools!” It is very close to, but not exactly like, “Eureka, at last, at last, Ha Ha Ha Ha!” This must be done with the proper emotion, of course. The behavior of such scientists seems to be genetically, rather than environmentally sourced. Never, ever has this been understood by sociologists, less so by psychologists.
It is also amazing that such laughter is independent of language. Perhaps our new device can tackle even this splendid example of similar, intangibility, in the future?
“What do you call this clever invention?“ Wojtek asked. For now, I call it the “Quantum Entropy Reversing Device” (QERD). “Fermi and Oppenheimer did some early work on Entropy Reversal” explained Stasiu, “and they deserve much credit, but, but,” Stasiu stuttered.
Everyone now knows that Stasiu could not properly recognize these two great men and their contributions, because he had to be careful about where he put their Initials. “I respect their contributions,” but Stash continues, “I also must not dishonor their Integrity and Character, so QERD it remains.”
“John and I understand that Calvin and Hobbes and their understudy, Watterson did their pioneering work on Entropy Reversal in 1987.”
“As you already know” Stasiu interrupted, “They were first!, but our device works on the high entropy of more subtle, as yet unproven concepts!”
“GDRZVACH!, GDRZVACH! Yes !” , we heard Stasiu’s recitation. That is it! Pay close attention now. There are only a few people in the world who can correctly pronounce the name of Professor Grzywacz. Even the great Professor, himself sometimes gets it wrong. Only one vowel and two syllables in the entire word, yet there are many, many things going on when this important word is audibly pronounced by a such a master. There is the soft, timbre of the “g” at the beginning, hardly noticed by the uneducated ear. Then there is the almost silent “r” followed by the rather harsh, but quick “z”, almost a “dz”, with a crescendo of the “Vach” at the very end of the word, the soft, gentle “v” buried in that word, ending with the cymbal “ach”, the loud, but at the same time soft, gentle “ch”. When put together properly, you can hear them all, “gdrz vach” The “y” sounds silent, but it is there, always. Only two syllables to this magnificent word, but when properly executed by its virtuoso, it can become true poetry, with a minor chord that always incites a remote, yet welcome surprise.
Sad, are those with high frequency hearing loss. They will not hear the soft “g”, or certainly not the hidden “d”. They usually can hear the “ach,” but never the softer part of the high pitched “c” before the “h”. The “z” comes across well, sometimes it is dominant. But they, all of the consonants, are always there, when done properly, unheard by these few unfortunate people. “A special word that has historical connections” continued Stasiu, “with our quest for reduced worldwide Entropy.”
The other problem with the word is that even when the word is properly but rarely articulated and correctly heard, it is impossible to spell it from this single, experience. Americans usually spell it “Zivacchh”. They always miss the “y”. This is why our countrymen and women always win spelling bees anywhere in the world. This is no accident, a definite advantage and never a digression.
It turns out that Stasiu always celebrates his inventive success by remembering the inspiration he has received from Professor Grzywacz. His name is pronounced correctly by Stasiu many times and it sounds even better as the evening sun sets, “Dziekuje, Professor Grzywacz for your pioneering work”. His name starts high in anticipated Entropy, yet ends in a lower version, always soothing and more understandable, never a disappointment.
“Ha, Ha,” sang these four technical wizards as they carried their first QERD device toward the Valley of Silicon.
The rest is Entropy!
